Pass the Health Care Bill – Then Improve It
by: Rabbi Michael Lerner on December 27th, 2009 | 3 Comments »
This piece, “Pass the Health Care Bill – Then Improve It,” by Peter Dreier (whose pieces appear in Tikkun from time to time) is worth reading. For those who don’t know, I post occasional articles here and at Current Thinking on the Tikkun home page that I think help us understand what’s going on. The previous article posted at Current Thinking was Jane Hamsher’s “Top 10 Ten Reasons To Kill the Senate Health Care Bill,” so you can see I am not trying to find pieces that agree with each other, nor do they necessarily express my own views.
If I wanted fair and balanced I would buy mainstream media. I want that hope Michelle Obama spoke to my heart … for REAL change … with a Public Option to be in the Conference Committee bill but sadly am not hopeful YET, Did any one besides me think that Rabbi Lerner was going to lead a revolution with the Network of Spiritual Progressives? It seems so insane that there is no outrage in the Faith communities for the sake of the sick, injured and dying.
Thank you for drawing our attention to this well-reasoned and well-informed article. I fundamentally agree with most of its content. I am glad that Rabbi Lerner is the kind of revolutionary who does not buy into an ideology that is easy to understand but false. It is important to listen to many points of view. This is the strength of the progressive movement.
The question at hand is not, “Should we settle for this bill and do nothing further?” The question is, “What is the most effective legislative route to enact real reform?” I don’t think Hamsher’s strategy of teaming up with Grover Norquist to kill the bill will reform our health care system.
I especially agreed with Drier’s last point: that we made a mistake when we did not defend ACORN from Republican attacks. Organizations like ACORN increase our capacity for grassroots response. We must work to strengthen and defend them. Jane Hamsher has done a great deal to move reform forward with her “Whip the Vote” strategy. We should not lose sight of the tools she’s created even though her alliances with Norquist and Schlafly are morally repugnant.
I have read several great diaries lately about moving the Overton window to the left. The gist of the diaries is that having an intransigent, unreasonable left wing moves America’s perception of the “moderate” leftwards. America loves to choose the moderate path. Thus, when activists such as Hamsher move so far out to the left that they offend us, they immediately turn the remainder of the progressive movement into moderates. I have not joined in the Hamsher-bashing, although I actually loathe her public partnership with Norquist, for this reason.
I would much rather have the public view Rabbi Lerner as the “moderate” than…oh, say…Joe Lieberman or Ben Nelson.
We do not have the arms or the degree of suffering in the general populace required for a successful armed revolution. Moreover, revolutions often end badly with dictators such as Stalin and Khomeni siezing power. The Civil War was a terrible trauma. Our current Constitution affords us the ability to change America through civil action. But it’s going to be a long road, just as it took decades to end slavery.
We are going to have to work even harder to enact campaign finance reform and to change the Senate rules. Lieberman and Nelson could not have hijacked our bill if it could have been passed with 51 votes. Corporate interests are not going to allow us to democratize Congress, and especially the Senate, without a fierce fight.
Change is possible. America ended slavery. We extended voting rights to women, Native Americans and other people of color. We created social security, Medicare and the 40 hour work week. We can fight back this latest assault on our civil liberties. We can and we must.
Thank you again for this post.
A fight to change the Senate rules will cost us all our political capital and exhaust us. That is just what our opponents want. In the end we will have something so watered down that it will be ineffective.
We need a simple and direct Constitutional Amendment the can’t be tampered with and is out of the reach of the Supreme Court.
Don’t tell me it can’t be done. All the other problems — jobs, health care, energy, housing, financial reform, global warming, etc. — cannot be resolved until our representatives are free to make the honest, considerate, and unselfish decisions that they promised.
We are wasting our time, our energy, and our money by not solving the money/politics problem first.